


Turn and Face the Strain (1/2)

by NellieOleson



Series: turn and face the strain [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-29
Updated: 2012-03-29
Packaged: 2017-11-02 16:58:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/371291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NellieOleson/pseuds/NellieOleson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack had big buttons and she knew exactly which one to push.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turn and Face the Strain (1/2)

_you're beautiful_  
you're confusing  
you're illogical  
you're amazing ~Lifehouse  
  
  
  
“You have to tell him, Sam.”  
  
 _Thank you, Captain Obvious._ She stopped mid-stride and pinned him with a look. “I know, Daniel.”  
  
Of course she knew she had to tell him; it wasn’t exactly something she could hide—at least not for very long. It was the _how_ she hadn’t been able to work out. They’d only spent one night together, and like a dumbstruck teenager, she’d never considered this outcome. And it’s not like they’d had time to discuss it. He’d shown up on her doorstep the night before his flight to D.C. and any thoughts of taking it slow were chased away by the heat in his eyes. There hadn’t been much talking and what little there was had nothing to do with white picket fences and 2.5 children.  
  
It was only a matter of time until she got the phone call from Jerry Springer’s people.  
  
Sam paced around Daniel’s lab plucking objects at random (where did he get this stuff?) from various flat surfaces while Daniel sat at his desk watching her, waiting for her to offer something more substantial. She wasn’t sure she had anything to give him.  
 __  
This page intentionally left blank—she’d seen it in countless training manuals.  
  
“I’m forty-one years old, Daniel. I travel to other planets for a living and things tend to blow up when I’m around. Having a baby isn’t exactly on the top of my to-do list.” It wasn’t last either but that wasn’t the point; babies weren’t supposed to be accidental by-products.  “And Jack—.” _Might not want daily visits from the Ghost of Dead Sons Past._ “Jack will be lucky to be alive when the kid graduates.”  
  
Daniel winced, but didn’t try to argue with her. Because he couldn’t. Her argument was solid if not complete and Daniel would understand that aspect better than most of the others running around in her mind. He stood up and put his hands on her shoulders to keep her from stalking around the room again. “Just tell him, Sam. Do you really think he’ll be anything less than thrilled?”  
  
Jacob Carter didn’t stop living when his wife died and he’d had one serious relationship before Sam left home. Her father had good taste in women and Sam had no reason to dislike her. But she had all the same. Sam could never see her as anything more than a cheap imitation, a placeholder in her father’s life. She had tried to like her, to accept her, and it had made her sick. She’d had migraines until her dad was transferred and his girlfriend hadn’t been willing to follow.  
   
Just remembering it now made her stomach twist and her eyes burn.  
  
So yeah, she did think it was possible Jack might be slightly less than thrilled.  
  
Knowing she wouldn’t be able to make Daniel understand, she gave in and told him what he wanted to hear.  
  
“I will, Daniel.”  
  
**********  
  
She didn’t tell him, of course.  
  
 _Denial: It’s what’s for dinner._  
  
Getting lost in her work was the most effective means of pushing the issue to the back of the line, so that’s what she did.  
  
For two months.  
  
She fine-tuned the dialing computer, volunteered for anything that kept her off world, and tried not to puke on her boots when morning sickness came crashing into her life. When Mitchell came along with all his enthusiasm and questions and shiny newness, she was there to walk him through eight years worth of mission files.  
  
That alone could have kept her occupied for a year.  
  
Jack was busy too and he couldn’t exactly stalk her from D.C. His calls were easy to avoid and when he did get through, she kept the conversation brief and meaningless and told herself he wasn’t at all suspicious.  
  
As her sole confidant, Daniel had no need for suspicion, but she thought he was throwing little pebbles of disappointment and encouragement at her window. Not wanting either, she distanced herself from him too, which was a lot more difficult given their physical proximity, but she managed.  
  
 And she missed them both like indoor plumbing on an extended mission.  
  
**********  
  
Sam deposited a bag of groceries on the counter and removed all the suspect food from her refrigerator. Anything that couldn’t survive a six-month stint in a deep freeze had no place in her kitchen, but the fresh fruits and vegetables always looked so inviting in their climate controlled display cases, she couldn’t help but bring them home with her. Home, where the majority of them would live a life of neglect, slowly losing their youthful firmness and growing a fine coat of grey hair. Forgotten and lonely in a way most nursing home residents would understand, they wasted away until they were unceremoniously tossed into a Hefty Tall Kitchen trash bag.  
  
An unlikely convergence of events had left her with nothing to do on base and she found herself home for the first time in weeks. She had plans for the evening too, big plans involving popcorn, lukewarm ginger ale and late night movie marathons. Maybe some baggy sweatpants and fluffy socks would join her in her revelry. _Good times_ —as soon as she got rid of the party crashing vegetables.  
  
A storm rolled in while she was taking a shower and a power outage followed closely behind putting her in the enviable position of rooting through her closet in the dark. Naked and damp and in the dark. Long forgotten shoes, desperate for attention, jumped into her seeking fingers. She tossed them back and kept searching, feeling absurdly victorious when her hand finally closed around a flashlight. After checking the batteries in her hard won prize she threw on some clothes and followed the dancing light to the kitchen.  
  
Her uncooked popcorn looked forlorn and impotent in the hazy glow of her light. It no longer had a starring role in the evening festivities. The ginger ale sat next to it preening, knowing it would still be useful and refreshing. She grabbed a glass and made her way to the living room. After coaxing a fire into existence, she sprawled on the couch and ran her hands over her stomach.  
  
Already it felt impossibly huge and intrusive.  
  
Lightning flashed through her windows and she started counting seconds, a habit she’d picked up from her mother. The storm was close and she had little hope of a speedy repair to whatever had interrupted the lifeblood to her television. She was considering returning to the mountain to bask in the hum of back-up generators when someone knocked on her door.  
  
She was expecting a neighbor looking to borrow some candles or a flashlight but found Jack instead. He didn’t exactly live in the neighborhood and he hadn’t mentioned any travel plans, but she wasn’t surprised to see him. Much.  
  
He was wet, too wet to have just come from the curb and she wondered how long he’d been out there. How many laps he’d taken around her block before coming to her front door. She expected him to barge in and demand answers but he stood on her porch looking tired and uncomfortable instead.  
  
She blamed the rain for washing the belligerence out of him.  
  
He didn’t waste any time explaining himself. “You know I love you, right?” The darkness hid his expression but there was something uncomfortably close to desperation in his voice.  
  
Not the rain then. That honor rested squarely on her shoulders, heavy and cumbersome. She tried to remember how things had gotten so far out of control, so wrong. The pregnancy made a fine scapegoat, but things between them had never really been right. The baby was just the icing on the cake—or the horns on the goat.  
  
She watched the water pool around Jack’s shoes. Her flashlight flickered and the wind blew through her clothes. She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the clean scent of the storm fill her senses. It was soothing, a sharp contrast to the turmoil that had taken up residence in her mind.  Her eyes opened when the wind shifted, bringing the rain to her front door.  
  
A bloated raindrop ran down her nose and pulled the words out of her mouth as it fell to the ground.  
  
“I’m pregnant.” It all came down to two simple words: three depending on how you counted contractions. She hadn’t said them out loud since talking to Daniel and suddenly the whole thing felt more like her life and less like a movie of the week.  
  
 _Breastfeeding and diapers and car seats…oh my!_ How the hell were they going to do this?  
  
“I—You’re what?”  
  
“Pregnant.” She said it slower even though she knew he’d heard her the first time.  
  
Hours passed in the little temporal distortion they’d created. Brave headlights swept down her street washing out her vision and turning Jack into an independent shadow. Another bout of lightning lit up the sky and she thought the storm was finally moving on.  
  
“I wasn’t expecting that,” he finally admitted.  
  
And that was the problem.  
  
“Yeah. Neither was I,” she said. They stood facing each other like two kids about to share their first kiss, each waiting for the other to make the first awkward move. The uncertainty of the situation made her brain hurt and she wanted him to just turn and leave.  
  
Nothing with Jack was ever that easy and he held his ground. “Can I come in now?”  
  
**********  
  
Sam closed the door and turned to follow him into the house. He hadn’t moved and she ran into his chest. He still didn’t move and she found herself effectively trapped in her own foyer. She thought about opening the door and making a run for it. She could almost see Jack’s shocked expression as he watched her sprint through sheets of rain in her previously fluffy socks—their rapid, wet splats echoing in the dark. How far could she get on her sock-mops before he decided to chase her down? Not far enough, she decided. In any case, it would be a short-lived reprieve. If he didn’t catch her, the Air Force would. Stupid locator chips.  
  
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jack’s voice floated in the darkness.   
  
A fair question, certainly, but not one she could easily answer. The situation was too multi-faceted, a disco ball of emotion spinning in her mind. “I wasn’t sure how you’d react,” she said.  
  
He reacted to that by taking her head in his hands and kissing her. She supposed he was trying to reassure her but it wasn’t helping. It didn’t matter anyway. Reassuring or not, she was going to go with the physical comfort. It was a start, and it gave her more time to not talk about how she might just resent his unborn child. She filed that thought away while he led her through the house.  
  
Jack sat on her bed and pulled her close, one hand on her ass and the other lifting her shirt. She put one slightly unsteady hand on his head when his mouth found her skin. The darkness in the room was complete and disorienting but she was grateful for it. If they were going to bury their mistake under more sex, she didn’t want to watch.  
  
Like the first time, there was little in the way of conversation.  
  
**********  
  
It wasn’t often Sam’s alarm clock got a chance to do its job; her own internal sense of time usually woke her first. The noise startled her out of a fitful sleep and she threw an arm over her eyes. It had been a long night and she wasn’t ready to let it go.  
  
The power had come back at 2:08 AM. She knew this because she had still been awake and like the responsible person she wanted to be, she’d reset the time and the alarm. She’d also gotten up to turn off the lights and reset the clock on the microwave, just in case any of her kitchen appliances had a bus to catch.  
  
Jack was stretched out on her side of the bed and she had to crawl over him to hit the snooze button. She knew she’d fallen asleep over there and was more than a little disturbed to wake up on the wrong side of the bed. Maybe she could use that as an excuse if the rest of the day went to hell.  
  
Her shower was sending out its siren call and she rolled to the edge of the bed. She started to swing her feet to the floor but Jack stopped her with a hand on her hip. It was warm and heavy, still full of sleep and she found its weight comforting. She let him pull her legs back and rolled toward him. The shower quit singing, angry at her betrayal.  
  
“Where are you going?” He asked. His fingers walked down her hip and onto her thigh and she had to work really hard to remember why she had been getting out of bed. Her snooze time ended and the clock bleated its wake-up call a second time.  
  
 _Work_ , her brain prompted, _you need to go to work._  
  
“I have to go to work, Jack.”  
  
“No you don’t,” he said. His hand continued seducing her skin and she thought maybe it was a good thing he lived three thousand miles away. _Who would save the world each week if she couldn’t get out of bed?_  
  
“Yes, I do.” She reached over him and turned off the alarm.  
  
“No, you don’t,” he insisted. “I told Landry I needed you for a couple of days to help out with some Secret Squirrel stuff for the Chinese government. You belong to me for the next two days.” He rolled on top of her and kissed the spot behind her ear that gave her goose bumps.  “I have it in writing.”  
  
What could he possibly need her help with regarding the Chinese government? That sounded more like a job for Daniel. She pushed him up so she could see his face. “He believed that?”  
  
“Just call me ‘Double Q’,” said Jack. Sam didn’t get the reference and he knew it; sometimes things got lost in the gap between their ages. More often, they got lost in the chasm between their maturity levels.  
  
She suspected this was a case of the latter.  
  
**********  
  
They spent most of their time in bed or in the shower, mostly because Jack had forgotten a few things when he’d packed. Things like clothes. She’d never understand how he could just hop on a plane with nothing. She would have been prepared to live out of her suitcase for a week. When they weren’t wet, naked, sleeping, or some combination of those three things, they spent some quality time getting to know one another.  
  
It was nice.  
  
Sam discovered Jack wasn’t as dense and emotionally distant as the character he played at work. He made a fair attempt to talk to her but she only gave him a few pieces of the puzzle to work with. Not the good pieces either; she kept all the edges to herself. They talked through some things and around others and by the third morning, she was beginning to think there might be more than soccer-mom hell in her future.  
  
And while ‘thrilled’ might have been too strong a word for Jack’s feelings, Sam thought it was only because he was holding back, rationing his happiness. She wondered how long it would take him to accept that this child might make it to puberty.  
  
They were lying awake in bed that last morning while the minutes ran off the clock. Jack was staring at her; she was staring at the ceiling. Waiting for it to come crashing down.  
  
“I have to go back,” said Jack.  
  
“I know.” The ceiling slid lower and she closed her eyes.  
  
He ran his fingers through her hair and leaned in to kiss her cheek. “We can make this work.”  
  
He almost sounded convincing but almost wasn’t enough.  
  
“Sure, it’ll be great.” She managed to smile when all she wanted to do was cry. “I’m really going to miss you.”  
  
Not that she didn’t miss him the first time he’d left, she had, but she’d spent most of her adult life alone and for the most part, she’d enjoyed it. Sam worked a lot and kept odd hours when she didn’t. Living alone gave her the autonomy she needed to live without the guilt of subjecting someone else to her odd behavior.  
  
That one night hadn’t been enough to change that. These past three days might have been. She was surprised at how well Jack fit into her life and now she didn’t want him to leave.  
  
“I’ll miss you too, Carter. I always do.”  
  
*********  
  
There was a package from Jack waiting in her lab. Impeccably wrapped at one of those trendy stores for dual-income parents of meticulously planned children— _just another box to check on their journey through the American Dream._  
  
She stared at it, wondering how he’d found the time to buy something, then moved it to her desk and poked at it for a while. It was strangely ominous and she was reluctant to open it. Eventually her curiosity won out and she unwrapped it.  
  
It was a baby book.  
  
A baby book covered in stars and rockets.  
  
It was perfect.  
  
She opened the cover and looked through it. Jack must have raided Daniel’s photo albums because he’d filled in some of the early pages. There were pictures of the four of them on an early mission to a planet that looked enough like Earth to fool the casual observer. She wasn’t sure how she would explain Teal’c though.  
  
He’d found a picture of her father to put on the appropriate page. He was standing next to General Hammond and she wondered if Jack had made a point to include both men. It seemed appropriate; Jack could be extremely insightful when he wanted to. She ran a finger over the picture and found herself angry with Selmak for not being able to keep Jacob alive long enough to see her child. It was unfair of her; Selmak had given her some of the best years she’d had with her father. Her inner dialogue started to debate whether Jacob would have been pleased or appalled that she was having Jack’s baby.  
  
Sam turned the page so she wouldn’t have to hear the answer.  
  
**********  
  
If Sam had known P3R-739 would be her last mission, she might have taken better notes or snapped some pictures of her team, something special to mark the event. But she didn’t know and the mission passed quietly.  
  
Two days after what would be her last mission, Sam was in the gate room with the rest of SG-1, setting out to investigate another prior sighting. They were halfway up the ramp when the wormhole disconnected with a definitive pop; the cruel jaws of a trap snapping shut around her. She barely had time to be surprised before Landry’s disembodied voice was demanding her presence in his office.  
  
Mitchell turned and looked at her. “Is this normal?” He was concerned and she found it strangely endearing. She almost forgave him for the hours she’d spent going over old missions with him. She was pretty sure that had cost her a year or two of her life.  
  
“Nothing around here is normal,” said Sam. She handed Teal’c her lunchbox and backpack and headed to the principal’s office.  
  
General Landry was sitting behind his desk, bushy eyebrows riding high on his head. He looked unusually fatherly and the nausea she’d only recently parted ways with came back for an encore performance. “I just got off the phone with General O’Neill.” He paused, giving her time to talk her breakfast back from the ledge. “He seemed surprised that you were going off-world.”  
  
Sam didn’t remember eating the bowling ball that was pulling her stomach to the floor but she’d had breakfast on base with her team and you couldn’t really be sure what they put in the mess hall food.  
  
How much had Jack told him? She couldn’t imagine how awkward that conversation must have been. That wasn’t really true she decided; there was a reason she hadn’t told General Landry herself. Still, she was surprised that Jack had done it for her. She would have put money on Daniel. For her own good of course. “Sir, I—“  
  
General Landry stopped her with raised hands. “I don’t need details.” He smiled at her and she wanted to scream. Didn’t anyone understand how badly she’d screwed up? “Just make sure you get yourself to the infirmary.” Then as an afterthought because maybe he was beginning to understand how her mind worked, “That’s an order.”  
  
“Yes, sir.” She turned to go, but he wasn’t finished with her.  
  
“Colonel Carter.”  
  
“Sir?”  
  
“Congratulations.”  
  
“Thank you, sir.” She walked out of his office wishing General Hammond were still flying that desk.  
  
He’d known her well enough to be disappointed.  
  
**********  
  
Sam felt every suffocating inch of ground between herself and the outside world as she walked toward the infirmary. Her face burned with humiliation in the cool, concrete hall and she was sure that everyone she passed knew exactly where she was going and why. Jack had kicked her right back into the rumor mill she’d only recently escaped.  
  
 _Damn him._ She turned around and went back to the elevators.  
  
Sam shut the door to her lab and switched on the lights. Her lab was her territory, the place where she was in charge, in control. It was familiar and safe and being there gave her the courage she needed to pick up the phone.   
  
Jack answered his phone before the first ring died out and the fact that he’d been expecting the call only fueled her anger. Sam paused, she wasn’t used to confronting him and she needed to regain some control over her raging emotions. It was a useless gesture, her words came out loud and demanding, the angry squall of a hungry infant. “You had no right to pull me off that mission,” she said.  
  
Jack snapped back at her, probably out of habit, but the words cut just the same. “I had every right to pull you off that mission. _Colonel._ In case you haven’t been paying attention, Carter, off-world missions are dangerous.” He sighed. It sounded loud and melodramatic over the phone, something Daniel would do. “I just don’t think you need to be taking unnecessary risks –considering.”  
  
He was right, and she knew it, but it was hard to let go. She wasn’t ready to trade her P90 and radio for a diaper bag and a baby monitor. And she damn sure wasn’t ready to be treated like something easily broken. She didn’t need a savior.  
  
She lashed out at him before her mind had a chance to calculate the effects of her words. Jack had big buttons and she knew exactly which one to push. “You should know.”  
  
 _Shit._ She closed her eyes and wished she could rewind that last bit. It was a cheap shot and Jack had all the salt he needed for those wounds. She let go of the last thread of her anger and slid to the floor.  
  
Jack was silent for a long time and she thought maybe he’d hung up. “Yeah, Carter, I should know.” His words were measured, deliberate.  “Thanks for reminding me that I killed my son. Sometimes I forget.” More silence drifted through the handset. When he did speak again, his voice was cold and flat, the voice of an unfriendly stranger.  
 __  
No Carter. I haven't been acting like myself since I met you.  
  
“You do what you want.”  
 __  
Now I'm acting like myself.  
  
Then he hung up.  
  



End file.
